Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s TikTok Ban Is A Dumb Performance That Ignores The Real Problem
from the big-fat-moral-panic dept
We’ve noted for a while how most of the hyperventilation about TikTok is of the manufactured moral panic variety. We’ve also noted how the folks who’ve been the loudest about TikTok’s privacy and security threats spent decades fighting against competent oversight or privacy legislation, yet now want to pretend that banning a single app somehow fixes the broad problems they themselves created.
With that as backdrop, this week Governor Greg Abbott announced he’s pushing forward with a plan to ban TikTok on all government employee devices. The Texas Governor’s announcement proclaims that TikTok poses a unique threat due to its alleged connection to “Chinese Communist Party members”:
“The security risks associated with the use of TikTok on devices used to conduct the important business of our state must not be underestimated or ignored. Owned by a Chinese company that employs Chinese Communist Party members, TikTok harvests significant amounts of data from a user’s device, including details about a user’s internet activity.”
Here’s the thing. While not quite as dumb as the push to ban TikTok on college campuses (easily avoided by switching from Wi-Fi to cellular), this is kind of silly and performative. There’s no real evidence the Chinese government uses TikTok to influence Americans at scale, and while TikTok has been found to violate privacy in very stupid ways, so has pretty much every major company doing business in our barely regulated data monetization markets across adtech, telecom, and numerous industries.
Abbott’s initiative pretends to address this by also prohibiting WeChat, Alipay, ByteDance, Tencent Holdings, and Russian-owned Kaspersky. The simplistic argument is that by just banning the biggest, clearly foreign-owned companies from devices, you’ve somehow fixed the problem.
But a random student or employee’s phone is absolutely filled with a long parade of dodgy domestic and foreign apps collecting everything from their daily location habits, to detailed online behavior metrics. That data is then feebly “anonymized” (a meaningless term) and access to it is sold to a laundry list of dodgy international adtech companies and data brokers (if your telecom provider hasn’t done so first).
It’s trivial for the Chinese, Russian, or any other government (including our own) to then acquire this data inexpensively, to help them build detailed profiles about Americans daily online habits in granular detail. So again, fixating on a single app doesn’t make any coherent sense. You’ve either got to fix the broader problem with actual policies and solutions, or you’re just making noise.
Republican policymakers in particular have a loud, proud, and not at all subtle history of fighting tooth and nail against privacy legislation for the Internet era, no matter how simple. They’ve also worked tirelessly to ensure privacy enforcers at the FTC lack the funding, authority, or staff to adequately police widespread privacy abuses.
They literally created the policy environment TikTok (and countless other companies, foreign end domestic) exploits. Now they want to pretend that banning a single app somehow fixes the problem they created. They want their cake and eat it too; they want to pretend they’re being “tough on China,” but they don’t want to do things like crack down on U.S. corruption (something clearly and easily exploitable by both Russia and China) or impose any rules that might cost U.S. companies money.
The resulting performance seems designed to distract the public from our multi-decade failure on consumer protection and privacy legislation. And with the occasional fleeting exception, a U.S. press blind to its own patriotic bias seems keen on helping them.
I still argue that policymakers making the most noise about this issue don’t actually care about TikTok’s privacy or national security issues. At all. As Trump’s failed “fix” for TikTok made pretty clear, I believe the end goal is to agitate a xenophobic base and force a sale of TikTok to a U.S. company friendly with the GOP (likely Facebook or Oracle, both with their own long history of privacy abuses), who’ll then immediately turn around and utilize the app to engage in all the same behavior GOP mainstays like Abbott are accusing China of.
Filed Under: gop, greg abbott, influence, privacy, privacy legislation, propaganda, republican, social media, spying, surveillance, texas, tiktok hysteria
Companies: tiktok
Comments on “Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s TikTok Ban Is A Dumb Performance That Ignores The Real Problem”
Politics is mainly about performing in a way that brings votes, coherence be damned. In the US specifically both parties do it a lot with R’s being a few orders of magnitude worse and not even trying to act to fix anything. D’s at the very least try. Sometimes. Rarely.
I’m not sure there’s any way out of the current political stagnation in the US where most politicians are trying to catch the regular Joe/Jane attention exhibiting themselves like peacocks while doing virtually nothing useful.
Mind you I’m fully aware it’s not too different in many other countries but since the US is the subject here I’m talking about the US.
If this is referring to government own/provided devices, for government purposes (and NOT personal devices), then I have grave concerns why it was previously policy that it was acceptable to have TikTok or any similar app installed. I don’t think there is any realistic work a governmental employee should be doing that would require a governmental device have what amounts to an entertainment app on their device (aka games, streaming services, etc). If governmental employees wish to use those apps, they should do so on their own devices (That seems like a fairly obvious policy to have in place… its lack would be concerning).
If this is/includes personal devices, my opinion is Abbott should shove his constitutional violations somewhere unpleasant (for him).
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I think that the jump from “govt devices only” to “all devices because NATIONAL SECURITY” is quite easy even if this specific initiative doesn’t include all devices and it still doesn’t address the problem.
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Includes personal devices.
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Ooops, looks like I forgot the obligatory signature.
Greg Abbott is a whiny piss baby
(I think that’s what it was …)
shouldnt be on government devices to begin with
1) s/be enterprise government managed
2) only way to load tiktok would be to have been whitelisted by said government
3) as such, would normally already be against government policies
4) as tiktok is also a website. did anything really get accomplished? other than another GOP flunkie looking like an idiot?
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OK, just how does one look like an idiot when already is an idiot?
TikTok in China
Relatedly, does anyone know anything about what TikTok is like in China? I keep hearing this narrative that “TikTok knows what they’re doing to American kids is harmful, that’s why TikTok in China works totally differently and is actually educational” (eg https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-between-tik-tok-in-china-and-the-us )
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So different groups of people train the algorithm differently.
I’ve managed to get Twitter to feed me a nearly endless feed of small animals and pet stuff.
Also, it does appear that Tiktok itself inserts videos manually based on what’s popular so… (can’t really verify this, it was mentioned in the comments section some time back)…
Now, I’m more concerned by the fact that the Xi Dynasty is controlling every single Chinese-based company and COULD use said leverage to either force countries to comply with Chinese law/Xi’s whims or worse (usually through the threat of pulling out or blackmail or worse) but pointing out that different people train their pet algorithms differently is not one of those fears.
This is political performance with the objective of deflecting attention from domestic issues to an external enemy.
This is anything but a "dumb performance"
Just because this kind of step doesn’t address the problem it purports to address doesn’t mean it is purely performative.
By not addressing the problem with problem-specific laws but with actor-specific ordinances, “lawmakers” don’t hand off the application of principles to the judicative but retain the control over how they deal with individual actors.
That sabotages the separation of powers and enables the lawmakers to act corruptly by advancing or punishing individual actors in order to gain political points or get kickbacks without actually changing the legal landscape.
To call this a “dumb performance” is like calling it a dumb performance when a “fire insurance” protection racket stands by a building burning to the ground.
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Abbott has never taken an action that isn’t performative. Your belief that he’s acting in good faith is itself not a good faith belief.
Moreover, if he actual gave a shit he wouldn’t have started with Tik Tok, and he sure as hell wouldn’t stop there.
Yeah, by definition that’s exactly what it means.
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Do people even read what they are replying to? In what world is subverting the separation of powers “acting in good faith”?
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No, it’s a dumb performance.
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Less dumb than ignoring anything but the subject line.
Right, and I’m sure there are many systematic differences in the algorithms from one country to the next. But the claim seems to be that TikTok operates a totally different “child-friendly” app in China with things like built-in time limits
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Ah yes, that red herring that all apps made in China have, and also other things like needing an ID to prove you’re an adult and whatnot.
Welcome to capitalism.
But this is beside the point that I don’t see a big difference in what the algorithm does.
Again, I have trained my pet algorithm on Twitter to show me a nearly endless amount of animal pictures. It’s a fair bit of work, but if you keep watching influencer nonsense, like influencer nonsense and whatnot, you get influencer nonsense.
And honestly, I have no desire to actually pinpoint out the bloody issues in said article.
And I don’t really wanna sign up for a TikTok Account.
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Long Game
YouTube has now grown to the point where informative videos, and not just mindless “entertainment” is commonplace. Everything from industrial processes to tech support knowledge is now on the platform. Not having access to youtube limits legitimate business operations.
As such, limiting tiktok’s influence is beneficial. Don’t cede ubiquity to a foreign controlled app that has already been known to violate data privacy. You’ll only encourage more violations, while being able to exert less control in the future.
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So you don’t believe in the free market, and don’t think American companies have the innovative power to compete, and need the gov’t to come in and protect them?
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American companies competing against foreign corporations, that may or may not be subject to workers union rights, minimum wages, environmental protection laws, accounting requirements, ect. isn’t a free market. I reject your premise.
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So again, you want to government to come in and protect an American company from the free market.
Sounds like you want to see a monopoly form. Kind of antithetical to your common (false) refrain that Twitter is some kind of monopoly…
But here you want the gov’t to remove competition. Not very conservative of you.
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I want the American government to come in and protect American companies from foreign crookedness. If multiple companies want to set up shop on American soil and compete, while being fully subject to American law, then I’m all for it.
And I’ll admit, I am very much against the old conservative globalists on this issue. You’ve got that one correct.
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Do you also want the Government to stop American companies contracting their manufacturing to foreign countries with cheap labour? That is part of the reason that the Chinese gained expertise in manufacturing, and market share in the American marker.
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Yes.
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Does that also mean the America should conquer place that have successor not available in America? I ask because you seem to be on the road to autarchy, and that leads to war, and not cooperation.
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ESL error. Thanks for playing.
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Ho ho ho, the 3 ghosts of inflation wants to haunt you with an increased CPI, slowed economic growth and an inability to combat the national deficit.
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Conservatives: “We want less government sticking their noses into our business.”
Government: “Okay.”
Conservatives: “No, not like that.”
Let's fix the headline
Texas’ Governor Greg Abbott Is A Dumb Performance That Ignores The Real Problem
Here’s the thing
Karl has the msnbc stick up his bum on xenophobia. Finding cases where they don’t exist.
Blocking travel from the source of the virus was logical
Baring travel from states that directly sponsor, fund, hand harbour terror is responsible.
Asking and demanding people enter the country legally, is how law works.
The problem with TikTok is it supplies a direct line of access to the Chinese government. The moral panic is overblown. There’s no real threat to the average citizen. But it makes sense for a ban on government use devices.
It’s not an issue of privacy. Only paranoid idiots or criminals worry about generic data sharing.
It’s about protecting real-time access to government data.
We live in a country that directly involves itself in other country’s business on a regular basis. As long as we do that, we need to protect the people we risk.
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